In my mind, he was guilty of no error, he was chargeable with no exaggeration, he was betrayed by his fancy into no metaphor, who once said that all we see about us, kings, lords, and Commons, the whole machinery of the State, all the apparatus of the system, and its varied workings, end in simply bringing twelve good men into a box.

Note 1.The title given by Lord Brougham to a book published in 1830. [back]

Note 2.Brougham delivered a very warm panegyric upon the ex-Chancellor, and expressed a hope that he would make a good end, although to an expiring Chancellor death was now armed with a new terror.Thomas Campbell: Lives of the Chancellors, vol. vii. p. 163.

Lord St. Leonards attributes this phrase to Sir Charles Wetherell, who used it on the occasion referred to by Lord Campbell.

From Edmund Curlls practice of issuing miserable catch-penny lives of every eminent person immediately after his decease, Arbuthnot wittily styled him one of the new terrors of death.Carruthers: Life of Pope (second edition), p. 149. [back]

Note 3.From Essays from the Desk of Poor Robert the Scribe, Doylestown, Pa., 1815. It first appeared in the Wilkesbarre Gleaner, 1811. [back]